Impotence corrupts

David Frum explains how corruption in France — the way in which bribery and the theft of public funds pervades French life — helps explain both French hostility to U.S. policy in the Middle East and unsympathetic coverage of the U.S. by the French press. The first point is straightforward enough. According to Frum, “much of the European loathing for those Americans who want to change the Middle East is pretty directly traceable to the fear that change in the region will threaten the livelihood of powerful Europeans and the funding of European political parties.” The second point is more subtle and perhaps more controversial. Frum believes that “European journalists obsess over ‘neocons’ in American politics precisely because they know that in their societies, the important political decisions are made by concealed, sinister, self-interested forces – and they find it hard to imagine that American politics could be different.”
So how does Frum explain the prevalence of the same obsession among so many journalists and others here at home?